Qiu Yuan still had his sunglasses perched on his nose.
He smiled knowingly.
The Cutter should be close to succeeding.
Although Qiu Yuan was very dissatisfied with The Cutter's recent performance.
Some time ago, he had sent him a message, telling The Cutter to investigate Pei Guangji's Halfway-Up-the-Mountain Villa in South City at the address he had sent.
But it was as if the message had sunk into the sea, without a word in response.
Qiu Yuan had even suspected that this was The Cutter's way of rebelling, that he had begun to harbor other intentions.
But he understood The Cutter's single-track, utterly simple brain. This heterospecies fundamentally lacked the ability to think, and the reason he remained the Spark Organization's most useful blade was that The Cutter possessed a killing instinct. It was no exaggeration to say that killing was practically a conditioned reflex written into his genes.
Even so, The Cutter's performance today had disappointed him.
He had been stupid enough to be spotted by a witness in the garden, and he had failed to clean up after himself on the spot, giving others the chance to discover the unconscious person in the garden.
That had brought out the Pei Corporation's entire security team.
Gerard's assassination should have been carried out silently. Ideally, The Cutter would have come and gone without a trace, leaving only a few signs of a heterospecies' provocation at the crime scene. That alone would have been enough to intimidate these people.
Qiu Yuan drained his glass, a faint burning sensation rising from his stomach.
Behind his sunglasses, his eyes were as deep blue as the ocean.
Fortunately, he had come to the banquet.
His eight arms were already spread across different corners of the estate. Each tentacle had its own secondary brain, and attacks that could only be described as mental pollution would ensure that the security team could not interfere with The Cutter's assassination plan.
Of course, the sophisticated light weapons in the guards' hands were useless against the tentacles.
After all, those weapons had been manufactured in the Qiu Family's arms factories.
The corners of Qiu Yuan's mouth lifted.
He raised his glass to Xi Zhengqing, who was not far away, and saw him hurrying back and forth through the crowd, as if searching for something.
Qiu Yuan raised a brow. "What are you looking for?"
He glanced around Xi Zhengqing and saw no one beside him. The smile on Qiu Yuan's thin lips suddenly grew suggestive, and he asked with great interest, "Did trying to steal someone else's man backfire on you?"
It was as if this was something he was delighted to see.
He made no attempt to hide the schadenfreude in his voice.
Xi Zhengqing looked back at him coldly. "He's gone. I told him to wait for me on the first floor of the banquet hall, but I can't find him, and I can't reach him now either."
Pei Ying happened to be coming over from the other side. His manners had improved dramatically in the past few months, and even on his way over, he remembered to smile and exchange pleasantries with the guests.
When he heard Xi Zhengqing's words, the taut string in his mind snapped.
The young Alpha impulsively strode forward and seized the other Alpha by the collar. The tension between them was so thick that they seemed ready to come to blows at any moment.
Pei Ying glowered, glaring fixedly at Xi Zhengqing. "What did you just say?! Xin Hexue is missing?"
Xin Hexue couldn't even recognize people, and his health was so poor. What was more, a heterospecies might still be hiding on the estate!
Xi Zhengqing brushed Pei Ying's hand away in disgust. "I'd like to ask why the Pei family's security is so poor that even a heterospecies can just slip in?"
A fight?
A fight was good.
Qiu Yuan watched the spectacle with keen interest and added fuel to the fire. "Don't be anxious. How could a grown man get lost? You'll find him soon."
Xi Zhengqing clenched his fists. Under the curious gazes of the many guests, he forced himself to maintain a normal expression. "I couldn't find him in the banquet hall, so I've already sent people to search the rooms."
Pei Ying gritted his teeth. "The Pei estate covers ninety thousand square meters and has nearly three hundred rooms. Are we supposed to search until the middle of the night?"
That count of nearly three hundred rooms did not include the adjoining spaces, such as bathrooms and walk-in closets built into and connected to some of the bedrooms.
Qiu Yuan watched the two men confront each other.
He noticed that both Xi Zhengqing and Pei Ying treated that young man in a distinctly unusual way.
Xin Hexue...
Qiu Yuan silently repeated the name to himself.
What kind of person was he?
Someone brought a young waiter over, and Xi Zhengqing asked, "Have you found him?"
The man said, "Young Master, he says he saw Mr. Xin."
Kirk glanced fearfully at Xi Zhengqing, then at Pei Ying, realizing that the job he had landed only a month ago was about to be lost.
He said uneasily, "Yes. If Mr. Xin is a Beta with black hair and black eyes, and looks East Asian, then I've seen him..."
Pei Ying asked impatiently and directly, "Where?"
Kirk fumbled to explain. "This is what happened. When I went to bring Mr. Xin a drink, I accidentally stumbled and spilled it on his clothes. I took him to the washroom to clean up, then went to ask the butler for a clean set of clothes..."
"But when I went back, Mr. Xin was no longer in the washroom. I haven't seen him since..."
Xi Zhengqing picked up on something, and his brow furrowed as he demanded, "Why did you go over to bring him a drink?"
Xin Hexue drank tea at most and never touched alcohol.
Kirk stammered an explanation. "Mr. Gerard ordered me to bring his East Asian Omega lover a drink with... drugs in it, then take him to the lounge. I just, I just mistook him for someone else. I didn't mean to hurt Mr. Xin!"
Kirk did not even give up the senior waiter who had passed the order on to him.
Xi Zhengqing took a deep breath.
After hearing the first part, Pei Ying had already left in a hurry to look for him.
Xi Zhengqing gave an order. "Detain him first. Keep looking."
With that, he strode away as if the wind were at his feet, the tails of his tailcoat lifting behind him.
Qiu Yuan paused when he heard Gerard's name.
The witness who had first been found unconscious in the garden was Gerard's East Asian Omega lover, so that person had never had the chance to appear in the banquet hall. It was no wonder that, in the resulting chain of events, the waiter carrying out his orders had mistaken someone else for him.
Gerard was a trusted associate of Old Master Pei and held an important position in the Federal Security Bureau.
Qiu Yuan had naturally made a point of learning about the man's conduct and past.
His eldest son, Cook, was already twenty, yet Gerard continued to fool around, keeping lovers outside his home. His private life was a mess, and he had a lifelong penchant for taking what he wanted by force, repeatedly challenging the Federation's laws protecting Omegas.
Many of his so-called lovers had ended up in his hands only because of money, power, and certain underhanded tricks.
Qiu Yuan's brows drew together.
Within his sea of consciousness, he could monitor the movements of his eight arms. Two of them suddenly abandoned their posts in apparent unison. Instead of continuing to block the guards running around like headless flies, they headed in the same direction, toward a certain place deep within the estate.
As the main brain, Qiu Yuan immediately ordered, [What are you doing? Go back.]
There was silence on the other end.
A long while later, two identical voices finally came back.
[...We protest.]
[You're only the main brain. Why should we have to listen to you?]
Then, like an old television set from the last century turning to static, there came a continuous buzzing noise.
The voices cut in and out.
Before long, Qiu Yuan heard the sound of running water in the background.
He had no idea where his two arms had gone.
They were even talking to each other—
[His hands are so small...]
[How are they so white?]
[He smells so good.]
Qiu Yuan: ?
Qiu Yuan: [What on earth are you talking about?]
There was another silence on the other end.
A few seconds later, the two arms deliberately cut off the flow of information between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system.
Qiu Yuan, shut out of the communication without his consent, raised a brow in bewilderment and suspicion.
The effects of the aphrodisiac called "Karmic Fire" came in waves, one after another, as if they would never end.
One wave of heat briefly subsided, only for another to rise.
Xin Hexue leaned against the wall of the bathtub, warm water rippling around him.
He had already come once. Involuntary tears dampened his lashes, and even lifting a finger felt a little tiring.
His lips, once so pale they seemed almost bloodless, had flushed red from the heat, and the roots of his ears had reddened as well.
The colors were gorgeous, like a pink dream.
Xin Hexue breathed slowly, his chest rising and falling.
The strange sensation washed over him again.
Using his hand was far too inefficient. Judging by how he felt and the drug's effects, Xin Hexue estimated there would be several more rounds.
Xin Hexue was sick of being unable to control his desire. Between one wave of arousal and the next, he had only a brief moment of clarity.
In that case, he might as well just have sex.
Once should be enough to take care of it.
The second wave of the drug's effects was gradually setting in, growing more intense, and Xin Hexue could only make a decision as quickly as possible.
He would not consider any of the targets for now.
Rationally speaking, it was because an act of such intimacy would disrupt his original plans.
But, to be more honest, the fundamental reason was that Xin Hexue was somewhat put off by Xi Zhengqing.
That guy was like a dog. Xi Zhengqing would very likely be so wildly overjoyed that he would go too far and wear him to pieces.
Xin Hexue had no intention of giving him that chance.
He needed someone obedient enough.
The prerequisite, before that, was that they had to be clean.
Xin Hexue thought of a detachable bionic android.
He breathed out a hot breath and gave a muffled cough before picking up the communicator from the shelf. It displayed countless missed calls.
He needed to get this over with quickly.
Xin Hexue opened the remote connection app that came with the bionic android.
Perhaps because of this particular bionic android's master-protection program, Number One had stubbornly wanted to accompany him when he went out, as though he were a bodyguard android rather than a butler android. But since there was no way for him to enter the banquet, Number One had ultimately stayed behind on the hovercraft.